The curtain went up in the smokey old theatre that was one half of the run down club on the back streets of the city. Even the neon sign above the door was only partially lit, a victim of the managements' "too much like hard effort" idealogy. So too was the half lights and the watered down drinks. They paid their acts by the minute and if they were boo-ed off stage that was their own lookout. There was a sign above the faded bar in a big tacky frame that said:

MANAGEMENT RESERVE THE RIGHT TO....EVERYTHING.Period. If You Don't Like It, DON'T Patronize Our Establishment. THANK YOU.

Some said that the "couldn't care less" attitude suited the times and they revelled in the rude staff and rubbish acts. They didn't come for the salubrious surroundings, they came for the gossip. It was the favourite haunt of a lot of minor celebrities on the down-low. Shadowy corners hid a multitude of sins, and the bouncers were quick to oust out any paparazzi. And most of all...it was dirt cheap.

Back in its heyday this club was a Mecca for Hollywood talent scouts looking for fresh acts. These days the only scout you'd get is a lapsed one, who fell off the wagon and sold his woggle and a lot more besides to feed his dirty habit. I wouldn't say the crowd was hard but their evil stares could drive fear into any act, and the heckling was so sharp at least two acts a week ran off stage crying. You had to be hard in this business to work here, and the acts knew it. So imagine the jeers and calls from a half empty crowd when the stage spotlight fell on a late middle aged guy and his dummy. It was not a pretty sight.

The ventriloquist looked like a failed accountant. Mismatched tweed jacket and pants, worn out shirt and a ridiculous bland bow tie. His glasses gave him the look of someone disinteresting and already certain patrons were shouting "boring" before he'd even spoken. Not that he spoke much at all in his act, he left that to Reggie. The dummy was like an old fashioned gangster in his black pinstripe suit and trilby. His face was powdered a ghostly white and his eyebrows were immense things, like thick ropes waiting to hang his scrawny neck. Most sinister of all were his big pale blue eyes that cooly sized up the audience and stared them down. They slowly moved this way and that in eerie contemplative assessment. Reggie wasn't afraid of a little ridicule, he knew his looks were an acquired taste. His puffed up wooden cheeks made him look like he was about to snigger at anything the fools had to say. He looked for the longest time, and then he spoke.

"Ah shut it won't ya. Give a guy a chance."
"Or what?" shouted a large fat woman in the front row smoking a cigar and showing far too much boosom.
""Or I'll gut you like my last heckler!"
She laughed at the insinuation and muttered something about how little men have big ideas of grandeur.
"Oh yeah, well fat people sleep on their backs exposing the trachea. I can slice nice and easy enough from that angle, and I'm small enough to slip in unnoticed."
"Do you have a key then small fry?" she shouted out, not so cocky now that she was being singled out.
"Yeah, your ugly boyfriend gave it up when I told him your dirty secret."
"And what secret's that?"
"That you murdered your own child."
The audience was laughing still at the absurdity, but the woman was choking on her martini. She wasn't smiling now, in fact she looked decidedly sick.

It was then that the ventriloquist addressed the crowd. He was a plain man, but his voice was deep and lacked expression. He was adept at sizing up the room and the mood, and he felt Reggie was going a little too far.
"Ladies and gentleman. You must forgive Reggie. My other half thinks he's the Downtown Serial Killer."
The crowd were still laughing at that ridiculous notion.
"He's a little small to be the slasher," someone called out from the back.
"Oh yeah," piped up Reggie outraged." Since when was size a pre-requisite for cutting someone down to size?"
"What did ya do shorty, jump on their backs from the ceiling?"
The ventriloquist was about to break this up when Reggie turned his head eerily towards the other heckler.
"No, I tripped her."
"Did she fall over you short arse?"
"No, she was wearing stilettos and I sliced her shins, she went down like a ton of bricks. Then I ...."

The crowd gradually stopped laughing one by one as the murderous dummy went on to get quite graphic in his description of what exactly he did do. The Management were listening at the back, it was a novel act, but they hadn't been boo-ed off yet so they weren't about to kick the guy and his doll off stage. In fact, they were quite intrigued themselves. One brave lady in the audience spoke up through the cigarette smoke and the clinking of glasses and murmurs of distaste.
"Don't you think that's in rather poor taste?"
"Huh?" Reggie's pale blue peepers blinked in surprise, like she'd dare to have the affront to interrupt him.
"Look lady, you're calling me out for having poor taste when you wore that out to a night on the town?"
That brought back a few sniggers. The lady retreated a little more into the shadows of her table.
"I like redheads. Maybe you ought to come backstage after the act and I can find you something more fitting to suit your complexion."
"Like what?" shouted a drunk from the back.
"A death shroud!" said Reggie deadpan as quick as his little mouth would convey it. The crowd clapped and laughed.

The ventriloquist was uneasy that Reggie was so detailed in his descriptions of the recent spate of killings. A lot of what he said seemed to be corroborated by eye witness reports. He wasn't sure where this accuracy was coming from. He was often chilled by the things Reggie said. He didn't particularly like him, but they had been working their act for almost thirty years. The dummy had a vulgar mouth sometimes, but what really upset him was how it spoke of such hideously violent crime. Almost like it relished the gory details, and it spoke a lot about the crowd that once he won them over they too seemed to like how graphic he got. The ventriloquist needed the money, and in truth he needed his friend. He was always the shy one, the person least likely to succeed. In one thing only had he made it like he promised he would...and that was show business.After years of abuse by his mother's heavy handed partner, he finally met Reggie at fifteen years old and split to make his living. They'd not gone as far as he'd dreamed, but they'd never had to go back...even that in itself was far enough, away from the beatings and degradations of his home life.

The crowd were certainly unnerved by the little dummy's blatantly tall tales. They'd read enough of the killings that they loved the mystery of the gruesome murders. But the thought of the dummy as the killer seemed to tickle them. They were ordering drinks and shooting their mouths off, but the creepy doll wasn't phased. The Management felt quite happy for once, this act could pull regular punters. In a rare moment of complete impartiality they were even thinking of giving them a better time slot. The doll was way too macabre for most people's taste, but it seemed to be winning them over playing to their sickly curious natures.

The ventriloquist didn't have much to say. He resented feeling like a wallflower when he was part of the act. He'd like to think he was a major part but he knew he'd be lieing. People came to hear Reggie brag and taunt the crowd, not to see plain old him. He hated the way they laughed at the vile things the dummy said, the sick acts of torture he spoke of. Very often the man thought that the doll was pure evil. It seemed to have a mind and will of its own, and half the time he'd not even feel present. The other half the time he was cringing at the way he made his living, laughing and glorifying other people's sad demises. " Suck it up you Square," Reggie would berate him with. "You make me sick." Old taunts came back to him, old wounds, heavy hands and a heavy heart at the violence that inevitably ensued. Reggie used words like,"Homo", "Loser" "Idiot"...but the ventriloquist had heard them all before.

After the act was done the applause followed them off stage. The ventriloquist was conflicted, he loved the positive attention, but hated the reality of how it was achieved."Oh boo-boo" Reggie mocked, "I did it and you were the straight man. You did what you're best at...keeping quiet and being ignored."
The stagehands smiled and the ventriloquist noticed and went red with the embarrassment. Reggie loved to make fun of him in front of others. By the time they were in their small, cramped dressing room he'd forgotten most of what had been revealed that night. He preferred it like that, best he blank out again. He'd been doing a lot of that lately. He put Reggie in his case and poured himself a drink; he'd been doing a lot of that too recently.

There was a knock at the door. The ventriloquist opened it, almost shocked anyone had bothered with them once they'd left the stage. Usually they just packed up and left. Sometimes they'd leave plastered and he'd wake up with Reggie in strange places. He'd asked Reggie a few times what had happened in that in-between time. "Oh you know" had come the reply from Reggie, his sinister laugh leaving a lot insinuated.
When he opened the door there stood the fat lady who'd first badgered Reggie. She smelt of cigar smoke and cheap perfume, and close up her cheeks looked like they were on fire she wore that much rouge.
"Excuse me dearie, but I had to come ask the little guy how he knew. Is he about?"
"How he knew what exactly?"
"Knew about my little boy. I never told a soul." She had a tear in her eye. The ventriloquist was going to shut her out but she barged in anyway. The ventriloquist wasn't a strong man, he was weak in so many ways. He let her rather rudely push past him, as she started looking for Reggie.
"Can I help you Madam?" he said crossly.
"I wanna speak to the organ grinder not the monkey," she had no manners. That pissed the ventriloquist right off. Then Reggie's voice could be heard from his case.
"What d'ya want you murderous ...?"
the last words rather fortuitously fading. She turned in that direction and started to hunt behind desks and shelves for the souce of the sound.
"How did you know I murdered my own child?" she asked in desperation still trying to find the dummy.
"Takes one to know one!" came the reply behind her, and she turned on her heels like lightning.

There stood the ventriloquist the last words coming from his mouth she just caught. His lips were moving, and he had the most hideous contrortion on his face. A mask of sheer pain and evil intent. She opened her mouth to scream but it was too late, the blade slashed her throat and only splatters of blood and a gurggle came out.
"Now look what you made me do fatso," came Reggie's voice from the ventriloquist. He was visibly changed, like he'd folded in on himself and gotten shorter. The blood was still gushing and he was smiling silently. "Oh yeah, I know your evil secret mother. You thought you'd killed me, but you hadn't. I didn't ask to be that man's punchbag, nor the object of his sick intent. You stabbed me and thought I'd die, you dumped me behind the apartment out with the trash. You couldn't drag me further.Blamed me for stealing all his attention from you. But I survived and never came back. Women have been paying ever since."

Reggie's laugh came from the case this time.
"Slice her again you Dummy," called Reggie from his case as the murderers mouth stayed shut. The ventriloquist's eyes were vacant, he was gone, too traumised like he had been that horrible night. Reggie was his saviour, the brave one..,"now what do we do?" thought the ventriloquist from deep inside the middle aged man's brain.
"Here's what we do you loser, we chop her up, you carry me out instead, and we put all her pieces in my trunk. I don't mind vacating my home for her, at least temporarily, she's family after all!"

Management heard that damn sick dummy from outside in the hall laughing. Jeesh that thing was creepy. At least the bland human symbiot it was attached to was sensible enough to know a good deal when he heard one. They'd decided to give the pair top billing. After all, they'd only be paying once but getting two for the price of one...they liked that arrangement.




© .Garry Saunders